by Herbert W. Armstrong

THE WORLD NEWS spotlight has been focusing on the boiling caldron of animosities and
wars in the Middle East.

The hostage crisis with Islamic Iran, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Arab oil crisis,
have flared all over news headlines.

This entire embroilment has enflamed out of an ancient jealousy between two women
over one man. Yet out of the present emotional flare-up emerges now a prelude to final
GLOBAL PEACE for the first time since mankind has inhabited the earth!

It is a factual story, stranger, more exciting and intriguing, than any fiction. Yet
the world is unaware of this tremendous portent or its fascinating background.

Seven modern events involving Middle East antagonisms, the United States and Britain
converge into this immediate forerunner to world peace.

I have been remotely involved, personally, in some of these seven events. These recent
events and their background is a long story, but one of major significance to the
whole world.

I have only recently returned from my most recent Middle East visit. There I had significant
personal conferences with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar
el-Sadat of Egypt. President Sadat showed me architect’s renderings of his historic
projected World Peace Center at the base of Mount Sinai. Amazingly, this is an actual
prelude to soon-coming world peace! Mr. Sadat invited my participation in this peace
project.

But my personal detached involvement in this whole Middle East activity, leading to
the climactic crisis at the close of this age, began even before the establishment
of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

I Meet Arab and Zionist Leaders

After the end of the Second World War, 1945, the charter for the United Nations was
drawn up at the San Francisco Conference. I attended the entire conference. There
I met and had private talks with several world leaders. I had two long meetings with
sheik Hafiz Wabba, Plenipotentiary Extraordinary and spokesman for the Arab world
at the conference.

Later, February, 1947, my wife and I were in London en route to Switzerland to investigate
a possible establishment of a European branch of Ambassador College. The sheik was
hosting in London a royal reception in honor of crown prince Emir, who later became
the late King Saud of Saudi Arabia. There I had another private talk with the sheik.

Again in June, 1958, we were in Cairo, Egypt. The sheik was spending the summer in
Alexandria. He and his wife came over to Cairo to spend an afternoon with Mrs. Armstrong
and me.

After the San Francisco Conference and formation of the United Nations, I attended
the first meeting of the Security Council. It was held at Hunter College, in the Bronx,
New York City. While in New York I had a conference with the secretary of the Zionist
movement. Whether it was Chaim Weizmann or his successor I do not now remember.

He was working energetically through the United Nations for establishment of a Jewish
state in Palestine. He told me the Zionist view. God, he said, had promised this land to the nation Israel. It had always been called “the Promised Land.” It
belonged to Jews by divine right. If GOD ordained that Jews should be there, he, of
course, had a well-founded argument. And just about everybody supposed the biblical
account did affirm the divine right of Jews to have there a national state.

But, on the other hand, sheik Hafiz Wabba told me the Arab side of the story. It was
equally convincing.

“Do you feel,” he asked me, “that your American people have a right to the land of
the United States, including California?”

“Your people have occupied this country as a nation less than 200 years, and California
still a shorter time.” This was said during the San Francisco Conference. “Suppose
the Japanese came claiming the land of California by divine right, and demanded they
be allowed to move all Californians out, and make it a Japanese national state. Would
you think their claim valid? Well, we Arabs have occupied Palestine for many times
200 years, and the Zionists want us to move out and turn it over to them.”

Thus leaders of both Arabs and Zionists explained to me their respective view, prior to the United Nations’ declaration of 1948 making that part of the land assigned
as “Israel” a national Jewish state.

But what the Zionist leader, and the whole world, did not know – and does not know
yet is that actually happened after God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and
his descendants.

True, the promise was made to the descendants of Abraham through Isaac, and not through
Ishmael. And therein lies the very beginning of the age-long animosities between. Arabs and Jews.

As I stated at the beginning of this article the entire interracial antagonism started
with the jealousy between two women over one man.

God originally had promised Abraham, “I will make of thee a great nation” (Genesis
12:2) and later, “thou shalt be a father of MANY NATIONS”(Genesis 17:4).

Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was barren and childless. This, in those days, was a reproach
for a wife. So Sarah brought her Egyptian maid, Hagar, to Abraham asking him to give
her a child by the maid. But when Hagar was pregnant, she despised Sarah. Sarah treated
Hagar harshly, and Hagar fled. Hagar became the mother of Ishmael, who became the
father of twelve princes, fathers of the Arab world.

God had not caused the pregnancy of Hagar, but had, by a miracle, caused Sarah to
become pregnant when ninety years of age. Her son was Isaac. God passed the PROMISES
made to Abraham on through Isaac, not through Ishmael, though God promised Abraham
that Ishmael would be the father of a large people – which turned out to be the Arab
world.

The promises, the land and nations (plural) as well as the messianic promise through
Christ, were passed on to Jacob. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel. Israel’s twelve
sons became the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Four hundred thirty years
after the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17), when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt,
God led them to the “PROMISED LAND” through Moses.

God promised them (Lev. 26) that if they obeyed His laws in their national government,
as established through Moses, they would become the greatest people on earth, the
wealthiest and militarily the mightiest. If not, the promises would be taken from
them and restored only after a duration of 2,520 years.

They never obeyed God’s laws – for long at a time. After Joshua, the judges, and the
prophet Samuel, they demanded a kingly government like the rest of the world. God
gave them Saul, then David, then Solomon. When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, became king,
Israel rebelled, making Jeroboam king, later establishing a new capital at Samaria.
The tribe of Judah with that of Benjamin, seceded, taking the new national name, kingdom
of JUDAH, so that they might retain Rehoboam as king, and Jerusalem as capital.

The kingdom of ISRAEL, its new capital at Samaria, as a people had never been called
“Jews.” Only the southern kingdom of Judah was called Jews. The first place in the
Bible where the term Jews is mentioned is II Kings 16:6, where ISRAEL, allied with Syria, was at war against
the Jews! The tribe of Levi joined with the Jews of the kingdom of Judah.

But the kingdom of ISRAEL, often called by the national name, “House of Israel,” in
the Bible, flagrantly disobeyed God. After nineteen kings in seven dynasties, they
were invaded by Assyria, 721-718 B.C. They were defeated and removed from their land,
taken as slaves to Assyria. Within about a hundred years they and the Assyrians had
migrated northwest. The ten-tribed nation ISRAEL, or “the House of Israel,” migrated
on into western Europe and Britain. They lost their language, lost their identity.
They had rejected God’s Sabbath, God’s signs to identify them as His people (Exo.
31:12-18). They became known as the “Lost Ten Tribes.” The world has never known what
became of them, or where they are today. (See our book The U.S. and Britain in Prophecy.)

In 604-585 B.C. King Nebuchadnezzar of the Chaldean Empire – the world’s first real
empire – invaded and removed the Jews of the House of Judah from their home in southern
Palestine to Babylon. Seventy years later a Jewish colony was sent back to build a
second temple at Jerusalem. Solomon’s temple had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s
forces. But most of Judah, the Jews, became scattered in many nations in the Middle
East.

This Jewish colony, with its religion, Judaism, considerably altered from that which
came through Moses by the rabbis after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, was there at
the time of Jesus. The temple had been repaired and enlarged by their ruler Herod,
who served the Romans who then ruled the world.

In A.D. 70 Roman armies destroyed the temple and Jerusalem, and the remaining Jews
were scattered. Some very few centuries later Arabs moved into that land.

The prophecies of the Bible affirm that the “Promised Land” shall be restored to “the
HOUSE OF ISRAEL” – not just Judah – at the Second Coming of Christ, and that Judah would be fighting there
prior to that time – as they are now, believing they are “Israel.”

So the whole world, including Israel and Judah, is confused and mixed up as to WHO
is WHO between Israel and Judah!

The Seven Modern Events

The first of the seven modern events I want to cover is the establishment of the State
of Israel in Palestine by the United Nations in 1948. I want to mention here that
Britain was involved here. This event followed the British Balfour Declaration of
1917. And, of course, as I have covered above, it was high-pressured by the Zionist
movement.

The second of these modern world-news events in the Middle East was the four wars
between Arabs and Israelis, starting with the war of Independence in 1948.

The third event I wish here to recount was my meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir,
following those four wars, the fourth of which was the Yom Kippur or October war of
1973. I had been making frequent visits to Israel since the fall of 1968. and was
involved in a number of projects there.

“I wish,” said Mrs. Meir earnestly, “that heads of Arab states would sit across the
table from me in friendship. We could do so much to help our Arab neighbors. Our scientists
and technicians could help them into much increased prosperity for their peoples.
Our musicians and leaders in the artistic field could take to them much uplifting
and cultural life. We could mutually help each other.”

That was a direct attitude from the top in Israel of the “GIVE” way, which must lead
eventually to world peace – after Christ’s coming. Since 1968 1 have been personally
involved in supporting the International Cultural Center for Youth (ICCY) in Jerusalem.
It is working with success to bring cultural cooperation, instead of competition,
between Israeli and Arab youth.

The Incredible “DECLARATION OF PEACE”

The fourth of these seven modern events was the most incredible peace overture of
modern times.

After four bitter wars against Israel in thirty years, President Anwar el-Sadat did
an unheard of thing. On November 20, 1977, he DECLARED PEACE, not war! At extreme
personal danger and unprecedented political risk the Egyptian president braved a personal
visit to Jerusalem to speak in peace to the Israeli Knesset.

It was the most sensational overture toward international peace made by any head of
state in our time! Consider Mr. Sadat’s position at the time. Egypt was the acknowledged
leader of the Arab world. Headquarters of the Arab League was in Cairo. Mr. Sadat
held high political prestige – perhaps the highest – in the Arab world. He braved
furious opposition from all other Arab nations and their leaders in making this trip.

It required vision, a sense of right against opposition, and extreme personal risk
as well as political risk. How many would have had the courage?

Result? Prominent Egyptians and editors abroad were assassinated. President Sadat’s
life was threatened. He lost immediately his prestigious credibility in the Arab world
outside Egypt. The headquarters of the Arab League was moved from Cairo to Tunis.

But President Sadat risked more than that. Egypt had been receiving military aid and
military training for his army from the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet gains a foothold
in any nation, they continue pressing on toward total domination, unless pushed back
by superior force (of which there is none). Yet Anwar Sadat had the guts to reject
further Soviet aid, and order their military officers and instructors out of Egypt!
It left Egypt with only one possible national ally – the United States!

Still further, he was the only Arab leader in the Moslem world who had the kindheartedness
and courage to let the Shah of Iran die in peace under his protection!

The fifth of this chain of events was the Camp David talks, bringing President Jimmy
Carter and the United States directly into this chain of events, preliminary to world
peace. The United States President used his office to bring the two Middle East leaders
together in a very tough effort toward Middle East peace. The leaders were faced with
no easy task, in a world dedicated to the incentive of “GET” instead of “GIVE” – of
war instead of peace.

The sixth of these seven events occurred when Prime Minister Begin and Israel “GAVE”
back to Egypt large portions of the Sinai peninsula. Of course it still left to try
to work out the tough questions of the West Bank, the violent PLO demands for a new
separate Arab state, and the Gaza strip. Nevertheless this was another step in the
direction of “GiVE.”

Finally, the seventh of these events, President Sadat’s planned PEACE CENTER at the
foot of Mount Sinai. Both the center, and its Mount Sinai location are dually symbolic
of PEACE. I’m honored to have a part in it.

This brings us to my most recent visit to the Middle East.

On the day before the United States’ national presidential election, November 4, 1980,
I had a conference in his Jerusalem office with Prime Minister Menachem Begin. With
me, as usual was Mr. Stanley Rader. Also with us was the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy
Kollek. Also our own TV camera crew.

Mr. Begin had been in a meeting with government officials in Tel Aviv. He interrupted
that meeting, giving it a two and one-half hour recess to drive one hour to Jerusalem
for this meeting, and then to return to the meeting in Tel Aviv.

When we arrived at the reception office outside Mr. Begin’s office, they told us we
would not be able to see Mr. Begin – he was out of the city. Imagine their surprise
when they saw him walk in for a warm handshake with us!

Inside his office I apologized for having caused the interruption in the TeI Aviv
meeting, and he replied, “Mr. Armstrong, I would get out of bed at two in the morning
to see you, if necessary!”

We had a most enjoyable meeting, which seemed to reflect a spirit of love. We asked
Mr. Begin for any statement he would like to make to the American people. This will
appear in a later issue of The Plain Truth. Our meeting ended in a bear hug, and his smiling approval for having his picture
appear with Mr. Sadat on the front cover of this issue.

Mount Sinai Peace Center

Eight days later came the meeting with President Sadat at the Gaza Residential Palace
in Cairo.

Mr. Sadat was giving an address on national television at a Teachers’ Association
graduation ceremony. Mr. Stanley Rader, and Mr. Osamu Gotoh and I were first driven
to the building where the ceremony was being held in an auditorium on the ground floor.
It was a large office building of some twelve stories. We three were taken to a top
story reception room adjacent to an executive office. There we viewed on television
the president’s speech and the ceremony below.

As it was about to close, we were escorted down to a waiting car in a large parking
way in front of the building. In front of our car was a Cadillac ambulance, immediately
behind the president’s car. We waited for some little time. Then Dr. M. Abdul-Kader
Hatem, our friend of some six or more years’ standing, personal adviser to Mr. Sadat,
joined us in our car. A siren pilot car led the procession ahead of the presidential
car. We were speeded in this motorcade through crowded traffic to the palace. Crowds
lined the street waving at their president. The ambulance, I learned, now follows
the presidential car wherever it is driven – another price Mr. Sadat pays for his
peace efforts with Israel.

At the palace Mr. Sadat had entered before we left our car. The First Lady was waiting
for us on the front portico. We had met her before. She took my arm and walked with
me inside, through a wide corridor, and into a reception room on the left. On the
right, in another room, a group of U.S. congressmen had been waiting for the president.
They knew we were Americans, and quizzically questioned our being there.

The reception room was all set up for TV lighting by both our own TV crew and the
government’s. President Sadat saw the congressmen for some twenty minutes first, while
his wife entertained us. As he came in, she left. Madam Sadat is a very beautiful
and charming lady.

After shaking hands and being photographed with TV cameras on us, we took seats prepared
so that the president and I sat close in a corner, I on a sofa with Mr. Rader on my
right and Mr. Gotoh on his right, and Dr. Hatem seated on a chair close to and on
the left of Mr. Sadat. The TV cameras continued for a couple minutes, or so, then
turned off the very bright lights and left.

That evening, on the TV evening news, in both English and Arabic, considerable coverage
was given to our meeting, but none to the U.S. congressmen.

We discussed world conditions, causes of evils and of peace, and affirmed the building
of “an iron bridge of peace” between Egypt and America.

Then President Sadat showed me the architect’s rendering of the projected $70 million
World Peace Center at the base of Mount Sinai. It portrayed a walled complex within
which were a mosque, a synagogue and a church, symbolizing cooperation between religions
and between nations. Adjoining is to be constructed a modern resort hotel.

It is especially significant that this World Peace Center is to be constructed at
the base of Mount Sinai, for there it has a meaning it could not have anywhere else
on earth. It was atop Mount Sinai that God gave to Israel and the world – written
on tablets of stone with the finger of God – the TEN BROAD PRINCIPLES OF PEACE AND
UNIVERSAL WELL-BEING AND ABUNDANCE!

There are, I repeat again and again and again, the TWO ways, broadly speaking, of
life – the one I simplify as “GIVE,” the other “GET.”

The Ten Commandments sum up in ten points the spiritual LAW OF GOD – outflowing LOVE
to God, and to neighbor. The first four summarize the principle of love to God, and
the last six to man.

The whole world has grossly overlooked the whole purpose and meaning of human life
on the earth. The world has entirely mistaken the purpose and meaning of government,
of religion, of science and technology, of education.

Humans were created and put on earth to BUILD PERFECT CHARACTER. To produce, to accomplish,
to create abundance, and to do it in peace, happiness and joy.

It all boils down to a way of life! The way to peace, to happiness, to production, to accomplishment, to invigorating,
satisfying, exhilarating achievement, to true success, is the way of “GIVE.” That is the way of out-flowing love to God and to man. The way of mutual
serving, helping, sharing, cooperating. You help me produce and I help you. Together,
both producing, we have more than when I try to “GET” by taking what you have produced,
and you strive to take from me what I already have.

The purpose of government is to regulate the behavior and performance of people in
this “give” way – to prevent the self-centered greedy or hostile from stepping on
the true rights of others – to guide those subject to the government into the way of “GIVE.”

The real purpose of education is to educate the mind in this way of “GIVE” and all the tools needed for that purpose – the tools of reading, speaking,
writing, figuring mathematically, the accumulation of needed knowledge to this same
end. But how woefully educators have missed the mark! They educate, beginning with
five- and six-year-olds, in false values, worthless goals, wrong incentives, all from
an utterly false, materialistic approach.

The entire purpose and meaning of religion is to bring humanity into the way of “GIVE” – to rescue us from “GET,” which is the way of SIN.

All our human troubles and evils have been caused by the “GET” motive. The ways of “GIVE” and “GET” are spiritual in nature. The way
of “GIVE” is a SPIRITUAL LAW, set in relentless motion by the Creator, as inexorable
as the law of gravity. Break that law and it will break you!

True religion – that of GOD the Creator and Jesus Christ the Savior-King and Ruler
– is to rescue a suffering humanity from the cruel evils of the “GET” way – from SIN
– and bring us, with the gift of eternal life, into the happy way of “GIVE.”

In other words, to bring us to a REPENTANCE of sin, turn us from it, and into the
way of GOD’S LOVE, for eternal joyous achievement!

But what do we find in the message of a supposed “Christianity” in this world, deceived
and maneuvered by Satan?

We find a “Christian” religion based on the “GET” principle. They shout, “ACCEPT Christ!”
“RECEIVE Christ!” “GET salvation!” They say this great overall spiritual law – the
basic way of life to PEACE and everything desirable and good – is “DONE AWAY”!

They proclaim a different Jesus (II Corinthians 11:4) – a disagreeing Son who “did away with” His Father’s Commandments.

The Gospel of Jesus is the MESSAGE Jesus brought from God and proclaimed to man. But
they proclaim their own message ABOUT the Person of Christ, not His message of the
Kingdom of God.

They overlook God’s LAW – His WAY OF LIFE. They have not made this a better world.
They have not brought PEACE to the world. Rather, WARS have been largely fought over
religious contentions and rivalries and hatreds.

The world’s religions have been spawned by Satan the devil. The world has been deceived!
But now in God’s nations, Britain and the United States, we see moves toward peace.
In Israel and Egypt, through their courageous two leaders, there is a turning toward
THE WAY of PEACE!

So what is the significance of the Peace Center at the base of Mount Sinai?

It was atop that mountain that the Creator-GOD handed down to Moses for all mankind
the ten broad principles of the way to PEACE – to righteousness, to joyous accomplishment and invigorating eternal life
in achievement!

Of course, that way had been shown to the first humans – Adam and Eve. That basic
spiritual LAW had been in relentless effect since humanity began. It is an eternal
law! But it was handed down visually and historically from Mount Sinai.

Now, at its base, as a result of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Israel “GIVING”
back this area to Egypt, and the courageous initiative of President Anwar el-Sadat
of Egypt, this Peace Center at Mount Sinai’s base will stand as a prelude to soon-coming
WORLD PEACE! This Peace Center will not, of itself, bring that peace. The living Jesus
Christ will! But this Peace Center is emblematic of it, and as a result of moving
in the direction of peace instead of war by these two Middle East leaders, it foreshadows
or becomes a prelude to the world peace that is as sure as the rising of tomorrow’s
sun!